Anonymous ID: 056057 Aug. 8, 2022, 4:53 p.m. No.17253005   🗄️.is 🔗kun

>>17230964

https://www.popsci.com/tiny-wireless-implants-could-monitor-your-brain/

 

Wireless ‘Neural Dust’ Could Monitor Your Brain

Sand-sized sensor implants give instant feedback from nerve cells

 

BY CHARLES Q. CHOI | PUBLISHEDAUG 3, 2016

 

On the tips of our fingers

 

“Neural dust” wireless, implantable sensors are currently only 3 millimeters in length. This new healthcare tech could be even more groundbreaking, as scientists are working to shrink the sensors to microns wide, about the width of a human hair.

Science fiction that features wires connecting brains to computers might now be obsolete. Wireless powered implants, each smaller than a grain of rice, could serve as “neural dust” that can one day scan and stimulate brain cells. Such research could one day help lead to next-generation brain-machine interfaces for controlling prosthetics, exoskeletons and robots, as well as “electroceuticals” to treat disorders of the brain and body.

 

The new prototypes, made by scientists at the University of California at Berkeley, are each roughly 3 millimeters long, 1 millimeter high and 4/5 of a millimeter thick. Each neural dust mote possesses a piezoelectric crystal that can convert mechanical power from ultrasonic pulses broadcast from outside the body into electrical power. The energy from these 60 ultrasonic pulses broadcast each second drives sensors and other electronics on the motes.

 

The piezoelectric crystals reflect some of the incoming ultrasonic pulses. Electronics in the neural dust motes can alter the pulses that get scattered outward, and so can wirelessly transmit data they gathered. In experiments with rats, the researchers found that neural dust motes implanted in nerve and muscle fibers in the leg could record and transmit electrical data.

 

“I was really skeptical of this concept at first, since it was so out of the box,” says Doug Weber, a bioengineer and neuroscientist at DARPA, who helped fund the neural dust research. “But it’s a really elegant approach, and it works pretty well.”

 

The researchers wanted to create wireless implants to avoid irritating the body. Conventional electronic implants that connect to nerves rely heavily on wires that can inflame tissues over time.

 

“The approach they’re taking is ingenious,” says neuroengineer Jacob Robinson at Rice University, who did not take part in this research. “They’ve addressed one of the most important challenges out there when it comes to neural interfaces.”

 

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Anonymous ID: 056057 Aug. 8, 2022, 4:55 p.m. No.17253380   🗄️.is 🔗kun

"George Washington University has rejected calls from some of its students to fire Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas from his teaching position or to cancel any of his classes in the wake of the court’s recent abortion ruling. Students created an online petition over the weekend in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, citing the justice’s concurring opinion that said the court should reexamine its past rulings on contraception and same-sex marriage. However, the school responded to the petition and noted it would not fire Thomas because his comments do not violate the university’s academic freedom guidelines. The petition also cited Thomas’s wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, as a reason to be terminated for her “part in the attempted coup in January of 2021,” likely referring to her correspondence supporting efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election. More than 6,200 people have signed the petition since it was posted on Sunday, and organizers have urged students to send emails to the dean of the university to demand that Thomas be fired."

 

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/courts/george-washington-university-rejects-fire-clarence-thomas